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In January 2009, Benoit Faiveley, a French journalist visited the last Palestinian keffiyeh factory in Hebron on the West Bank. Keffiyeh is the iconic headscarf made famous by Yasser Arafat. It seemed the factory might not outlive its 76-year-old owner; not only is it faced with Israeli military checkpoints, the complexity of exporting goods from the West Bank and now competition from Chinese Keffiyeh manufacturers is proving to be another challenge. This symbol of Palestinian identity is now imported largely from the Far East. With the growing popularity of scarf in the 2000s, Chinese manufacturers entered the market, driving Palestinians out of business as a result.

This entry was posted on Friday, March 12th, 2010 at 12:56 pm and is filed under News and Society. Both comments and pings are currently closed.